all day people
come into the shop
complaining
of the plummeting temps
that raise us up another miracle


Sometimes, I find myself obsessed with a single word--a word that keeps appearing and reappearing, fusing and overlapping my concrete world and my writing world. The word of the moment is "miracle"--a tiny little word with monumental meaning.

My obsession escalated when an itunes search came up with the song "Ordinary Miracle," sung by Sarah McClachlan in "Charlotte's Web", the movie. This song is beautiful; it's a song about how life itself is a miracle happening before our eyes every single day, and because of the recurrences of things like rain drops and sun rises, we see them as "ordinary." When I stop to think about how amazing every thing is--just an ocean wave rushing in upon the beach right in front of me--I am moved to tears. Life is amazing--full of miracles--everywhere, big like the sky and small like a pine needle! What right have we to choose among them, rate them and even shun them?

And so its December, the tree is up (by some twisted miracle I don't have time to explain) and the miracles so ordinary are everywhere lighting themselves up all around me! Gratitude is the next wonderful word that comes to mind.

in today's mail
a note from my professor
praising my little book
all the leaves on the trees
turning their brightest yellow


This after receiving a note in the mail from a former grad professor; how a little note like this carries with it more power and punch than its writer will ever know! Or perhaps he does, being a poet himself. Back in May, when I published "six sunflowers", I sent out a copy to the professor who helped me publish "empty baskets" my last year of Grad school. I hadn't even received so much as an email from him acknowledging he had received it, never mind a thank you. But this note was so much more than a thank you--it was an acknowledgment to me as a writer from another writer that I am indeed a writer and a good writer! It tugged hard at my heart strings that, shamelessly, I admit need tugging at once in awhile, especially now that I find myself removed from the literary circle of peers that Grad school had provided, a circle I may have taken for granted.

Anyways, the little note went on, after the never-too-late thank you, to praise the poems it contained; even listing poems he found particularly moving. But it was what he saw in the progression of my overall writing that I needed most: In the work, I really hear a voice confident in its abilities and aesthetic. When I first began work on my thesis, under this professor's direction, I wrote my own mission statement as a poet. In it, I hoped to redirect the tone of my poetry, to be more imagistic, more original and above all, more empowering. This note from my professor made me think that I had indeed achieved this and more. This mission statement was written before my discovery of tanka; tanka provided for me a forum for these things I was trying to accomplish. I didn't want to erase the hardship and despair from my poems; I wanted to establish a voice that had overcome, a voice that celebrated both the struggle itself and the beauty I had learned to rely on to lead me out from beneath it.

My professor ended by saying he expects he'll be using my poems to teach in his future classes. How could their be a higher honor from a former professor? So this poem was written to show my elation, my heart and soul felt joy, at being so acknowledged in the place inside me that matters the most and to show how a soul can be lit with so very few words. Ah, but we tankaists already know this, don't we?

a sea strong wind
sends throngs of crisp leaves
tumbling up the street
so all the trees tomorrow
will be November clean and new

Nothing touches the writer in me more than a brisk fall day! Went for a walk this morning with the dog; the ocean was stirring, the wind was so strong that the sand off the beach hit me in the face as we passed; and the trees seemed to be losing their leaves before my very eyes. There is just something incredibly surreal and timeless about a deep gray-blue sky full of wind; about watching the earth shed its ornate wardrobe and become somehow starker, cleaner. I feel an awesome sense of renewal with the loss that November brings.

Needless to say, the morning inspired me to scribble out several tanka, and then I got into the Jeep with the dog and drove the entire coastline, stopping to snap pictures with my camera, of waves and gulls and the lights on Thatcher's Island. How absolutely blessed am I to live on this rugged little island! But how I wish I were a Cape Ann artist rather than a Cape Ann poet; such yearnings to be able to paint what captures my heart and speaks to my soul. Maybe someday I will find the time to take a class or two and pick up a brush, but for now, I try to translate my moods and impressions through the words of my little poems . . .

rain
this dark September morning
loving the earth
better than I
looming about with my pen

Hallelujah! It's raining today! Secret: I am in love with the rain. Probably one of my biggest pet peeves (I hate that saying) is people complaining complaining complaining about the weather--the rain, the cold, the snow, the wind, the clouds, the fog . . . unless it is sunny and 75 degrees, people are just not happy! This just infuriates me because I love ALL weather--I see it as a gift from God, as an amazing array of experience, ours to embrace. What is even more distressing to me is how people associate "bad" weather with a "bad" mood. If the rain puts you in a bad mood, then you are a weak individual with little adventure and no imagination! This past Tuesday was the first rain we had had in weeks; there had been water bans on, everything was brown and parched, forest fires were popping up--and then the rain--what a blessing! Yes, the rain is a blessing, the rain is a gift, the rain is amazing--like a mother, it nourishes all living things around us--it nourishes us! People, lets get out of our little boxes and give praise to the bigger things that make our everyday experience an amazing wonder.

after the show
on global warming
I shiver
sitting on the warm step
beneath a late sinking summer sky

I have always been an ecologically-minded person; and I raised my children to be the same; my son grew up to make a career out of it. But on this lazy August Sunday afternoon, after watching a program on the Discovery Channel about global warming, with my son, I felt a wave of shame come over me; somewhere along the way, even with all my attention and admiration for the natural world, and the poems it produces, I've become somewhat of a slacker. After the show, I wanted to repent and trade in my SUV in for an economical hybrid, buy organic foods, change all the lightbulbs in my house to energy savers, unplug all my unused appliances and whatever else I could to decrease my CO2 output!

So I felt ashamed, anxious and overwhelmed, but as I sat on the step, watching that big old sun I'd been taking for granted fall from that big old waning summer sky, I told myself, its never too late. Its not too late, and no effort is too small. Today, corny as it sounds, a TV show reminded me of how precious the world I write about everyday really is. And because of that, I made a new commitment to make some changes, however small, in the way I live my everyday life.

I went back into the house and turned off all the ceiling fans in all the rooms except the one I was in. Tomorrow I'm off to the store in my SUV to buy energy saving lightbulbs. On second thought, maybe I'll bike. I could use the exercise.

sea stones
line my back porch railing
salmon ivory and slate
how I yearn now return
to where I found them

Seems appropriate that my first post should be a poem about 'sea stones', hence the name of this blog, and also fitting that I should retrieve one of the first tanka poems I ever wrote (with a bit of revision of course).

I like this poem because it speaks to the cyclical theme so often found in tanka, in nature and in the human experience. The older I get, the more I find myself returning to the simple things; also the more I question our taking things away from their natural places. This poem speaks to both, returning the stones to their home and also the speaker returning to the place where she found the stones, a place of beauty that can never really be kept or emulated by the kept objects. Just the same, we are all collectors and even aware of beauty's mutability, by keeping the stones we hope to be reminded of the beauty we witnessed first hand. And the cycle repeats.